CARgo: New-age phone mount, old-school Bluetooth transmitter

eleMount smatrphone in-car mount

Handout

GoGroove’s FlexSmart X3 Bluetooth FM Transmitter

Handout, Flexsmart

by
Lowell Conn, Postmedia News | August 22, 2013

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Jobsian phone mount

It’s a testament to how wonderful a world we live that an inventor can go online to kickstarter.com with a prototype of a premium car smartphone mount called eleMount, and can raise five times his needed capital in less than two weeks.

Launched as a Kickstarter campaign in early August, eleMount has already surpassed its $10,000 goal, and why not? As the inventor proclaims in a promotional video, “My goal was to design a product that you would fall in love with, a product that was so beautiful, so functional and so universal that you couldn’t live without.”

Thousands of years of civilization proves you can live without eleMount, but it’s nevertheless an impressive high-end accessory, constructed from digitally cut aluminum and featuring polyurethane pads on each end that hold the phone, and stick to any flat surface without any suction cups or locks. It elegantly works with all mobile phones and tablets. If Steve Jobs had designed an in-car phone mount, this is probably what he’d have invented. It’s priced as though he did. $80; visit elephantele.com.

Bluetooth for the old school

GoGroove’s FlexSmart X3 Bluetooth FM Transmitter is a tweener product in that it’s unlikely to appeal to technocrats who feel that FM transmitters are yesterday’s technology, and yet the luddites who might have use for this type of device wouldn’t know what to make of it even if we broke into their car, installed it and then waited around to show them how to use it (which would be awkward).

The FlexSmart X3 is engineered to make Bluetooth wireless phone calls in conjunction with your Bluetooth-capable cellphone, with a built-in FM transmitter designed to route audio to the car stereo’s FM band. It has a cool mounting mechanism whereby the cigarette lighter adapter, which powers the unit, is attached via a flexible coil , making it easy to position the device for ideal placement in the car.

The technology includes A2DP capability, which is ideal for both calls and to stream music, and it also features an auxiliary port so that the old-school buyers of this product can kick it even more old-school with a wired connection. $80; visit gogrooveaudio.com.